


Drown Out The Storm

by Kennel_Boy



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 05:49:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15745530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kennel_Boy/pseuds/Kennel_Boy
Summary: One thing Goodnight and Billy have in common: neither of them likes thunderstorms.





	Drown Out The Storm

**Author's Note:**

> _Prompt: Goodnight/Billy, kissing as comfort._
> 
>  
> 
> Prompt fill for Poemsingreenink, plus it gives me a chance to feel out some elements of the up-on-blocks Mag7 AU I'm working on. I might expand on this one later, but, really, I'm unusually pleased with how this little quickie turned out.

Rain hammers down on the deck overhead, the sound broken only by the hollow booming of waves beating angrily against the side of the ship and the cries of human misery all around him.

The ship heaves and Billy jolts awake on the floor, his heart pounding in the dark.

He pushes himself up into a sit, just listening. The storm had been building when they put out the lamp. They’d smoked themselves to sleep as guard against nightmares and memories, the _madak_ cigarette shared out between them, even though they expected it wouldn’t be enough. Goodnight would wake with the storm above transfigured into the thunder of guns and a reading of sins he can’t forgive himself for.

But the only waking breath in their room is Billy’s own, ragged and harsh. The calm of waking won’t come. He can feel Jìng Li’s grip on his arm, terror giving thin fingers the strength of iron. The reek of the hold, a rising sewage of sea water and excrement, lingers in his senses. And the sound of the rain on the wooden deck goes on and on…

Billy lets out another shaking breath. That’s the difference.

They aren’t under the open sky anymore, with nothing but the tent between them and the wrath of all the heavens. Neither he nor Goody like storms. They mean restless sleep or no sleep for both. But they’ve rarely terrified Billy before tonight, not without some other memory tangled up with them. He’s always been the one to hold Goody through the wind and rain, to anchor him while he speaks overloud and too cheerfully or sings or screams to drown out the phantom guns. He’s the one to pull Goodnight down into sex that’s too desperate to ever be good, but tires them both and drowns Goodnight’s demons.

But rain on canvas is a wholly different sound than a storm at sea. And here, hidden away in their windowless ground room in The Elysium, the most privacy they’ve ever been afforded in this newborn, uncivilized country, he hears again the sound of those storms beating on the roof of his coffin, the promise of a cold and airless death not even the keenest wits or sharpest knife can hold at bay.

Billy rises to his feet, slow and unsteady. He thinks about dressing and heading into the lobby, in case there’s a guest who needs looking out for. Or building up the fire for when the widow Freeman and her daughter arrive, though they won’t be opening the kitchen for hours yet. Anything but sitting still and trapped.

 _“Cher…?”_ The sound of shifting bedclothes, and that sleepy, confused French frailty announces Goodnight’s wakening. “Where you get off to?”

“I’m right here, Goody.” He feels his way back to the bed, deciding beforehand he won’t fight the arms that wrap around him, no matter how little he wants to be still. He wants to be grounded more than he wants to move, anchored here and now, not drifting fifteen years in the past. 

Instead, a careful hand finds his wrist unerringly, even without a light, and guides him to the warmest spot, just between the border of his pillow and Goody’s own heavily-blanketed side of the bed. Goodnight uses Billy’s body as a guide, fingers ghosting down over the tiger-marks left by too many bullets grazing his skin until they find his hip and coax him still closer.

The kisses are light and questioning. It’s still not first nature for Billy to return them, even after so many years, but it is a comfort. He sinks into them, stale sleep breath, beard-tickle and all. He lets himself drown a little, until some of the tension finally bleeds out of his shoulders.

“Dreaming?” Goody asks, the last hard sound of that word softened even more than usual with his concern.

Billy nods. “Yeah. You?”

“Nothing good. But not so bad as usual.” Goodnight finds Billy’s forehead in the dark, smooths his hair. “What time is it?”

Billy wraps his arms around Goodnight and sinks back into the mattress. “Too early for you to get up yet. Thought I’d get some work done.” His voice is steady, if barely. And he lets just enough tease through that Goody will know that thought’s already in the past.

“William Yi Robicheaux, you will keep your restless ass in this bed, or I swear to Almighty God…” Their chins bump as Goodnight lifts his head to kiss him again. A distraction for both of them.

“That is _not_ my name.”

“You’ve had enough of ‘em, you can afford one more. Anyway, it’s the name you get saddled with when you’re thinking of leaving your sweet wife cold and alone during a thunderstorm.”

It’s foolishness enough to laugh at, weak and quiet, but, pressed close as they are, it drowns out the storm.


End file.
